Brain

Alzheimer's disease is the most frequent form of dementia in the elderly. It is usually sporadic, but a small proportion of cases are familial, linked to mutations in the Aβ precursor protein (APP), presenilin 1 or presenilin 2 genes. The mutations identified previously increase aggregation and/or the production of Aβ, and have an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance with complete penetrance, meaning that only one allele of the gene needs to be mutated in order to produce the disease.

WASHINGTON — Older air traffic controllers can head off mid-air collisions at least as well as younger controllers, using experience to compensate for age-related declines in mental sharpness, a new study finds. The evidence that experience triumphs over the normal changes of aging could help to overturn myths about older workers that are contributing to the draining of the pool of skilled professionals.

These findings appear in the March issue of The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

Tampa, Fla. (Mar. 12, 2009) – A study to determine if patients with type 2 diabetes can benefit from a combination of autologous (patient self-donated) stem cell infusions (ASC) and hyperbaric (above the normal air pressure of ) oxygen treatment (HBO) before and after ASC has found "significant benefits" in terms of "improvements in glycemic control" along with "reduced insulin requirements." The combination therapy could decrease type 2 diabetes morbidity and mortality, said the authors, who published their study results in the latest issue of Cell Transplantation (Vol.

By peering into the brains of people with dyslexia compared to normal readers, a study published online on March 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has shed new light on the roots of the learning disability, which affects four to ten percent of the population. The findings support the notion that the reading and spelling deficit—characterized by an inability to break words down into the separate sounds that comprise them—stems in part from a failure to properly integrate letters with their speech sounds.

It may be possible to "read" a person's memories just by looking at brain activity, according to research carried out by Wellcome Trust scientists. In a study published today in the journal Current Biology, they show that our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a finding which challenges current scientific thinking.

It may be possible to "read" a person's memories just by looking at brain activity, according to research carried out by Wellcome Trust scientists. In a study published today in the journal Current Biology , they show that our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a finding which challenges current scientific thinking.

Tampa, Fla. (Mar. 12, 2009) – Researchers from DaVinci Biosciences, Costa Mesa, California, in collaboration with Hospital Luis Vernaza in Ecuador, have determined that injecting a patient's own bone marrow-derived stem cells (autologous BMCs) directly into the spinal column using multiple routes can be an effective treatment for spinal cord injury (SCI) that returns some quality of life for SCI patients without serious adverse events.

Québec City, March 12, 2009 – Boosting calcium consumption spurs weight loss, according to a study published in the most recent issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, but only in people whose diets are calcium deficient.

Choosing to have aggressive brain surgery after suffering a severe stroke generally improves the patients' lives and allows them to live longer, according to research by neurologists at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The findings should help patients and families put into perspective a decision that is nearly always painful and difficult to make – whether putting a patient through aggressive surgery after a catastrophic stroke is worth it.

Researchers have shown that they can tell where a person is "standing" within a virtual reality room on the basis of the pattern of activity in the brain alone. The findings, published online on March 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offer compelling evidence that the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical to navigation, memory, and imagining future experiences, works in a structured and predictable way. That discovery is contrary to what many experts had previously suspected, according to the researchers.

March 11, 2009 — An enzyme researchers have studied for years because of its potential connections to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and stroke, appears to have yet another major role to play: helping create and maintain the brain.

When scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis selectively disabled the enzyme AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in mouse embryos, overall brain size was reduced by 50 percent, the cerebrum and cerebellum were shrunken, and the mice died within three weeks of birth.

Over half of children born extremely prematurely need extra educational support in mainstream schools, reveals research published ahead of print in the Fetal and Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

In particular, they struggle with maths, the research indicates.

The research team analysed the intelligence (cognitive ability) and academic prowess of 219 eleven year old schoolchildren who had been born before 26 weeks (of pregnancy) in 1995 in the UK.

Blacksburg, Va., March 12, 2009 – Scientists from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the University of Louisville have revealed that genes for a specific type of molecular secretion system in Rickettsia, a structure that is linked in many cases to virulence, have been conserved over many years of evolution.

Children born extremely prematurely are at high risk of developing learning difficulties by the time they reach the age of 11.

A study carried out by the University of Warwick, in collaboration with University College London and the University of Nottingham, showed almost two thirds of children born extremely prematurely require additional support at school.

Extremely premature refers to children who are born below 26 weeks gestation.

Everyone knows that its important to keep a cool head, but a new study published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) shows that for Alzheimer's patients, a cool head may make the disease worse. In the research report, scientists show that a protein associated with Alzheimer's (called "tau") builds up in brain cells at an increased rate when temperatures fall, such as when a patient is anesthetized or experiences hypothermia.